to have you with us in our program, you have all the big questions. so if you can clarify some things for us, right from, from what i understand energy contained in molecules is pretty much the reason for life on earth. so energy can be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred, right? so this is really mean that energy that i consists of. we can trace it back to where life started. maybe even further big bank. in principle, i suppose you could, but nobody would have a brain big enough to do that is really the flow of energy, which is the important thing. so the way is moving from place to place and through us continuously. so we are eating and breathing all the time and we're changing our molecules of time. so the, an easy way to think of it is like a stream is flowing down a hill side and the, the molecules in the stream. and any one moment or not the same molecules,

but the stream itself is morris, as we are a person in that sense sustained by discontinuous blood. okay? so in that sense what happens to my energy flow and molecules that energy consists of one site die? what happens with energy? well, you just break down, transferred anywhere, right? it's not, it's not transferred into another single being linked with you. it's transferred into the whole fabric nature is transferred into the worms and the bacteria that eat you up. if you're buried, if you're converted into most the c o 2, if you're burned, then then you will be turned into pumps. all right, so send them a tower. fully speaking, it will be like spreading ashes in the ocean, right? yes. okay. you said a live forms can generate energy and you think viruses can't do that. but then i

look at viruses and they're new viruses every day and they mutate. so i wonder, i mean, if they're not living, how can date it will? well, i think us living and it's not that we can generate energy, we can converse, energy that's in the environment into energy that is useful for us. and that helps us to live, to do everything that we're doing them relating to move around to think, to build new muscles, whatever it might be. that all costs energy which we take from the environment by eating food and burning that food in auction. the way that viruses get around, that is they, they are parasitic. they simply sabotaged our own systems of conversing that energy into things made copies of themselves. so in that sense, we are very similar to viruses. we are simply, we'll, we'll parasitic to you, but they're not living organisms. or, if you, us 2 different biologists. question,

you've got 2 different dances. we can't define life. there is no definition of life . and so we can define if a virus is alive or dead. and the reason is because life is really a continuum from non living things to living things. and a virus is in the gray areas. but it makes copies of itself. it evolves and changes over time in that sense. it, it seems alive. see where, okay, was a fair m that all live organisms generate energy. what would that make sun? i mean is sun life in that sense? no, we are not generating energy. we're feeding off energy this in the environment. this flowing of the sun is producing a continuous flow of energy already are feeding grady on that on that source of energy. but how come can't just fade off the sun's energy and harness it like

plants to, for instance we, we can't do that. in fact, it will be virtually impossible for an animal to do that because the amount of energy that plant sketch, by converting sunlight directly into the kind of fuel that you need to live, will not be enough to really take a step time so stuck to the spot in the good reasons that they have an enormous surface area. the symmetry or whatever it may be, which is capturing the sun's light and converting it into organic molecules. but if we were to, there are actually some animals that have eaten the chloroplasts, which do the photos imposition plans. and they, they get the tiny amount of energy from that because they, they don't have enough surface area to capture the sun. and the process is so slow that he's not capable of allow you to run around and chase of the things and behave like an animal. so charles darwin and the building where having this,

sharon is named after him. this says live on earth appeared in the small pond created from rainfall. you are saying life appeared from the higher thermal event on the bottom of an ocean is wrong. 1 this is a strange thing about darwin dough and was a visionary scientist. and he was right about something very important, which was the theory of natural selection. he was wrong about all kinds of details . he was completely wrong about how genes work, for example, on the origin of life. well he, he wrote to a short paragraph in a letter to a friend of his that was never published. where he imagined that life might have started in a warm part on land. no. i'm said that it's far too soon for science. me

thinking about these questions. so it's very easy. i think a lot of how small, really, just people like to see, go in is equivalent to being a profits. and that if you can show that darwin was wronged about one thing that he must be somehow wrong about everything though it was a scientist. scientist saw a wrong almost by definition about a great deal. but science as a discipline can become more correct over time. as we realize mistakes as we begin to correct the mistakes we begin to approximate on the true. so no one scientist is ever right about everything. okay, so let's assume that you write about they had with thermal vents and being of our origins on the bottom of the ocean. there are number of biologists and they're saying that similar advance in the presidency of the moon, jupiter and saturn can be found. what does that tell us to do things life could emerge there one day miss possible. i'd like to think it's possible. i certainly

think it's worth going to these places to find out. it's also of course we're going to places where i personally don't think life would have for me quite because well, i personally don't think life would form on title, which is another thing moves when you think we should go there. i think we should go there because i might be wrong because if life did stop, then it would follow completely different principles to the principles that i talk about. what any scientist should want to know is the truth in the end. so i personally think that the moon and seller, this is the most plausible place to find life in our own solar system. what do you make of the theory that live came on earth from space i think is unlikely. i certainly can't rule it out. it's in a strange way irrelevant because we'll never know how started on

we call it a historical question. we can't know what the answer actually was, because we don't have a time machine. we can go back in years. even if we did have a time machine allowed us to go back for 1000000000 is we would arrive, where should we go? should we go to the bottom of the ocean? should we go to a warm pond and how long should we wait until we see life trolling out of something? so we'll never know how life started. what we can know is how, in principle kinda stero, planet, just a wet rocky find it with no life on it. what are the driving forces that turn it into a living planet? full of life? what, what, what are the materials that are needed? what kind of energy flow is needed? we can understand those things and so we can understand why it is that life started on, i think intellectually weaken, understand that. and by that same criteria, we should be able to say, well, life wouldn't have started in these places for those reasons. now if,

if life was delivered from space to a, we don't know where it came from when it came from what the conditions where it tells us nothing about the principles that govern the origin of life. we don't need to as well historically. it was like that which is an accident. i was speaking recently to the nasa planter research. sure. jim bell, and he was actually proving he's point that there was life on mars millions of years ago because there was evidence of liquid water and the climate was works. as a biologist do think it's possible is absolutely as possible. it would be, i would say, surprising and disappointing if we never found any trace of life on mars. i think it would be quite surprising if we found life still on mas, surprising, surprising. now, it wouldn't, it wouldn't astonish me. plainly, there's nothing on the surface. if we dig down a few meters, it may be that we find things that would only certain be virtually don't. we can

tell from the atmosphere of mars at the moment that there's almost no, it's called the secret librium. but in the, in the earth's atmosphere we have gases like me say mixing with oxygen, which if, if it was just left alone, if they weren't being continually produced by, by bacteria, then they may say would react with oxygen. and you wouldn't see these gases as a reactive co existing together in the atmosphere. we seal on mars. there are occasionally tiny little traces of me thing, probably produced by geological processes. so if they're still life on mars, it must be virtually dormant. and very little of it. but when they were oceans and they were oceans for 3 and a half years ago, the conditions was really just right. it would be disappointing if life hadn't started. do you think if there was life on mars or any other planet for that matter

that we would know at this point a live forms would resemble anything like us here on earth. depends on what you mean by resemble. so i would say probably an animal if you think about the history of life on earth than the animals appeared quite abruptly about 550000000 years ago. and life started 4000000000 years ago. so. so for more than 3 quarters of the, of the history of the planet when there was like round, there weren't even any animals. it's very easy to imagine that the planets may just stay bacteria forever. much easier to imagine that than it is to imagine that that would be kind of convergent evolution meeting to animals leading to humans on other planets as well. and if you just think about animals, you know, an octopus and a human, very different kinds of beings. so the idea that we would get human,

some people think would, but i personally don't, i think we would see cells i think we would see life made of coughing. so in that sense, i think it would be similar. but in the structure of animals, i don't think it would be very nick, we're going to take a short break right now. when we're back we'll continue talking to nick lane, evolutionary bio canvas and the best selling arthur talking about the origins of lives. they with the i

again, there are rumors of war, there are rumors of invasion and again, the country is ukraine's their allegations of a russian military build up within the countries borders. though it is a fact, ukraine is receiving lethal aid from nato countries who benefits from this strategy . you a tool that was bad for your eyes and your posture that it would stop you from having real friends and finding a girlfriend. but what they fail to mention is that you can make thousands of dollars every weekend by simply playing video games. a stacy been a couple of them because i always wanted a solution that was showing that this is a little property. as i was originally looking for connecticut multiple to do stuff is no longer course to make video games a high paying job. you have to be gifted and quick with it. hang on to open up with respect to parents to little bit more to listening. bottom in this sounds of

webpage bentley up amongst the booth, but even started yet gala boy, when you mo, store muma video it out or you mean yeah. was it neil's feel? are you guy? uh, the owner, but the outside vehicle it will still be stuck with these odd to do i also easy. ah and we're back with mclean evolutionary biochemist. going back to what we're saying right now. story from simple single cell organism, bacteria here on earth. how can you sign at some point but period started to develop, right. and then it transformed itself into more complicated form and then others just stayed the same bacteria, like you're saying here, a nurse are tearing,

developed into animals, into humans and probably on other planets. it just stated material, i mean, well, area state ition for some material to become us and others to just stay but period . most bacteria who stays bacteria and her state bacteria for 4000000000 years. they really haven't changed very much. we can see fossil bacteria in the fossil records from st hospital 1000000000 years ago. this is a very strange thing about complex life. if we think about plants and animals, but also single cell, things like that, we all have these big, complicated cells that have essentially all the same machinery in them. we, if you look at the plant cell or a mushroom cell, down a microscope and one of our cells, most people couldn't tell the difference really different to about syrian very

similar to each other. so plant cells, habits are last as well. it does focus into this, but apart from that, almost everything else is the same. and so it becomes a very interesting question. why is it the plan switch routed to the spot and photo synthesize to make their own organic matter and which runs around and each plan. so other animals on a fungus which dissolves things and absorbs the nutrients, they all have exactly the same structure of cell. now, this is strange because you might think that if these are adaptation to a way of life, then they should all look different to each other, but they will look the same as each other. and so there's a, there's a kind of an interesting problem at the heart of biology, which is why is that the case? and given that we all plainly related, we all share the same structure. then the only arose once. and so you can say, well maybe it arose on millions of occasions and we just don't see any evidence for

that. but we've looked hard and we can't find any evidence for multiple origins of complex life. so if you're taking that face value, you may say, well, it's really rare, it's very unusual for complex life to evolve. and when he does, you got all of these curious properties. now, i think and not everybody agrees with me, but i think the reason is what's called the symbiosis, but really what i want to get inside another one. and, and that leads to all kinds of conflicts and resolutions of those conflicts and getting along together. and that's changed, really the whole playing field and it changed how selection worked. basically, symbiosis, one fell getting into another. if we simplified and break down might be possible reason why things are different, but made of the same. so right. why for instance,

i don't know. some bacteria resistance to things and others aren't like for instance, there is but syria that can survive in acidic pool of yellowstone, but will know what happens to humans. god forbid falls inside. you know what i mean? is it the same reason the cells can be know in parties? i mean, effectively because of this cell, symbiosis cells can become enormously larger and effectively more fragile to, i mean, the bigger and more complicated, you are easier to damage you. and so if you, so a lot of cell into it as a rule. yes. so bacteria, tiny valley robust but simple system is protected by a wall with a wall around them. and if you take a bacterium from the floor of the lab and so it into yellowstone pom poms as well, it would also die. the ones that are living that have adapted to live that over millions of years. but the type of cell being small and robust is much more able to

live in that environment than the one of the complicated cells that can give rise to dinosaurs are also far more likely to fall to pieces and go wrong. and so you throw them into a spring and fall to pieces. another thing, i mean i do understand how, you know, the 4 basic elements that are mixed under certain conditions and they produce still living so that i get them. i don't really understand how that living cells become self governing and conscious. this is a big question. possible question to answer them. i was one of the most interesting questions probably and all the biology. what is conscious and i don't think we have an answer yet. this 2 to 2 or 3 possibilities. one of them is that it's really an emergent property from a really complex nervous system. and then if you could make a robot or

a sufficiently complex, then it would become conscious as well simply because, so all of this processing going on at the same time, leads to kind of an awareness that is unstoppable about maybe the case. a lot of people would think perhaps it's not. i don't think at the moment we have any way of knowing. another possibility is that it's a property of matter that all matter you asked earlier on, is this some alive? i think the answer is no. but if, if consciousness is somehow linked to, to an undiscovered form of principle of matter of physics, then it would be the case that even the rock would be conscious in some way and everything and trying to be minister away. the question for me is, i think consciousness is linked with life. i would say lots of lower animals are

consciously aware in one way or another. so i don't think with this complex central nervous system so much is living cells. i think it's again the process of how energy works that leads to the electromagnetic fields and so on. and that's where we should be looking for the answer. ok. and then there's cells that do, i mean, you know, it's such a natural thing for us to seek a soulmate to reproduce, right? so it's really the idea of continuation and survival is really inherent to, to anything living. where did that come from 1st? i mean, what 1st like this primitive pronoun cell to sing? well, i want to multiply i think the very 1st cells almost do anything negatively. so if you're in an environment where there's a continuous flow of energy flowing through it. and, and that is turning gases or rocks in the environment into organic

molecules. and those organic molecules, things like that for example, conform spontaneously under those can quit paths that can do that kind of fast. so we find in our cell membrane building lots of proteins. the amino acids they can be formed under these conditions. and if you have a continuous flow of energy and a small proportion of that is reacting, informing these things, then effectively what you're seeing is growth. and fats will organize themselves spontaneously, into cell like structures. and those will keep growing and as they grow, they become less stable and they divide into it's almost is equal property of any system which is growing like that. so to understand why things would divide into is quite easy. it's just me to growth. and then if there is

linked with that genetic information, that's a separate question, whether the genes come from that's difficult to. but if it's linked, this cell gets a slightly better set of information james, than this one does, this one might be more likely to survive and divide again. and this one more likely to die. and then we're into standard biology into natural selection. what darwin was talking about under 50 years ago, i've heard you say that at some point oxygen was a pollutant. and then you know, which is sort of adapted. and then i see people choking literally dying and getting really sick in big cities because with carbon dioxide emissions. do you think at some point the carbon dioxide emission can be like, where breathing fresh air right now, where we would actually adapt to it being

some mass extinction in the history of the where the things that got preferentially wiped out the most likely to die. we're the ones that suffered the most from carbon dioxide from being poisoned by carbon dioxide. so the one i'm thinking already is that permian extinction. this was 250000000 years ago. funnily enough, the animals that could draw around, dig in the mud and stagnant mud and deal with sofa. so things are hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide in large amounts because they were able to ventilate that was purchased and they could kind of breathe, get rid of the calvin outside. they were more to survive. then the more simple things that are best up to the bottom and they had to take whatever was coming out them. so they get floods of carbon dioxide and they just $68.00 of them died. so

we are doing this to ourselves. now, with global warming, we're gradually fixating the oceans. the oxygen is being driven out of the oceans as they get warmer. the c o 2 is increasing and city find the ocean slowly. the conditions are a little bit similar to what was happening 250000000 years ago. and a lot of scientists are seriously worried that we will recapitulate that by which time the oceans of dad, in those gases, like hydrogen sulfide, bubbling out to them, killing the life on the chores as well. now, some ice will survive, maybe not as maybe not much, but fast food. 5 or 10000000 is on the pan. it will be the same as it is now. we absolutely fine. we just won't be on it. we'll kill ourselves. that's all you know, i've also heard this idea that if you don't use certain parts of your body of organs, like for instance, astronaut, your costs amounts in space because they're in weightlessness,

their bones get fragile. so it made me think illusion is not necessarily an improvement, isn't it could be ration. absolutely. yes. a loss of parasites were often seen as being a kind of degraded form of life. actually they, they tend to become simple because they have to minimize anything that would recognize them as a parasite and curious or immune systems for example. so the simpler they can make themselves, the more likely they are to survive. and so this kind of direction towards losing complexity is quite common with, with people in space losing bone mass. that's not necessarily evolution the single lifetime. but if, if we were to have generation after generation living in space, then it would be selected in the genes, bones will become useless and so they will be re absorbed. now we're just love to

think that we are the pinnacle of evolution. are we know there is no, there is no problem. there is no pinnacle of evolution. everything's flat. a bacterium is the product and 4000000000 years of evolution in a specific environment. so away. so in that sense where we are lucky survivors at the end of a long, a long process, you so as in to the springs that yellowstone and we will not do very well, bacteria will do much better in that sense. in its own environment is much closer to a particular b pollution. evolution is going nowhere, not interested in us. we are interested in when we have a lot to be interested in, but we shouldn't be beheaded about it. i think that there's more than a 100 years we've known that evolution has no direction. thank you very much for

this wonderful inside. it's really a pleasure talking to talking. thank you very much. with everything back ah ah, by mistake. then i have to say that you stand the criteria in germany for many years, his main compatibility with public opinion. those politicians paused as competent. we act in line with what people expect from them, but public opinion is produced or shaped by mass media. those are shaped by journalists, most german journalists are sympathizes of the social democrats and of the green. therefore, as long as it goes green and social democratic policy projects,

you pass is a competent leader. it's not the only thing you all know, but they did a mapping by high middle now i on my head up my lap and i had a knuckle. but my law bob begin thought, now well on my map, bear a bit a well, i mean a relationship with

a asylum seekers may have to wait months at the beller is bordered to get processed. if a new plan from brussels gets the go head writes groups and say the move throws away the rule, book version unions around the globe call for covet vaccine patents to be lifted. blaming production restrictions for deaths in the developing world. the on the constrain will be followed they others if we cannot act and if all countries in at at here to single vaccinations, traffic and england's cancer catastrophe senior medics react to deming, government and findings that 700000 potential cases may have been missed since the pandemic began those are your headlines this our,

my colleague niel harvey will be here in just under an hour.